A Dominican Hindu/Catholic wedding

What an amazing, love-filled, beautiful trip I had. My friend (who is Hindu) and her new husband (who is Catholic) decided to get married in the Dominican Republic since their families are spread out across the globe. I had a wonderful time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. 

I was completely mesmerized by all of the Hindu ceremonies -- so much colour! And, of course, the tropical locale didn't suck at all. :)

For more pics, check out my Flickr. 

At this time tomorrow, I'll be....

here.

I'm heading to the Dominican Republic for my friend's wedding and I CANT. WAIT. I promise I'll have more envy-inducing pictures for you when I get back next week!

Reflections on home

Well, dear readers - it's been awhile. (Or should I say reader...Hi Mom!)

I took a bit of a blog hiatus this spring, as you may have already guessed. It was a busy and stressful time -- in March, my fella and I moved back to our hometown into an apartment that's pretty rough around the edges in a not-so-great neighbourhood. It was a particularly tough move because we left behind a beautiful, well-cared-for apartment in a quiet Toronto neighbourhood. We chose this route because it has allowed us to save a TON of cash to buy a place of our own (which we hope to be able to do by the end of the year).

But even though our new place will benefit us in the long run, it has taken awhile for me to feel comfortable and settled. I like to have a home that provides a bit of sanctuary (which is probably one of the reasons why I put so much care and effort into making our living space as homey and beautiful as I can). Moving into a place with a crummy bathroom and zero counterspace and a thousand little flaws just gave me this icky, mopey feeling -- like I had no refuge from the big, bad world.

Now that a few months have passed, I'm starting to feel more relaxed. We've painted, cleaned, and disguised as many imperfections as we can. This will never be my dream apartment and I will be happy to move into a place of our own as soon as we can -- but at least I finally feel like we can be comfortable here over the next few months.

My fella and I just got back from our first vacation since moving into our new apartment -- a wonderful camping trip in northern Ontario. We spent four blissful days reading, hiking, swimming and sitting on the beach. It was just the escape we both needed. But on the way back, I was surprised at how much I was looking forward to being home -- even a home with a crummy bathroom and zero counter space.

I'll leave you with a few snaps of our trip. Isn't Ontario beautiful in the summer?

The honeymoon sweater

After we got married in August 2009, my fella and I went on our honeymoon in Nova Scotia. It was a perfect place to relax after the wedding -- charming, interesting, and full of stunning views like this:

One of the most awesomely surprising things about our trip was when we stumbled across an amazing yarn store smack dab in the middle of rural Nova Scotia -- the Lismore Sheep Farm. It's actually a working farm where they take the wool from these guys:

An actual Lismore Sheep Farm sheep

And turn it into this:

My personal knitting nirvana

And, as if finding this treasure trove of yarn wasn't enough, each skein only cost $4.75. Yes, $4.75 for 100 per cent wool from sheep grazing about 100 feet away. Needless to say, I went a bit nuts. I got enough yarn to make a sweater for me, a sweater for my fella, and a couple skeins to bring home for my Mom and sister. Plus, we went back the next day to buy at 100% wool blanket. I broke the zipper of my suitcase trying to stuff in all the woolly goodness.

So, fast forward a year and a half to the present day. You would think that would have been ample time to finish at least one of the sweaters I intended to make with all of that honeymoon yarn. Well, my friends, I'm sorry to report that this is as far as I've got:

Kind of pathetic, no? I'm about three inches into making the Cobblestone Pullover for my fella. With any luck, it will eventually look like this:

Did I mention my husband is 6'6"? That's a LOT of torso to cover. Maybe that's why this is the first sweater I've ever knit for him. But I've decided to pick this up again and devote some serious time to this honeymoon sweater over the holidays. Who knows? With any luck, I'll have it finished by our second anniversary!

La vita è bella

I just got back from Italy. This is a big deal. I don't really travel much (between paying off student loans and saving to buy a house, travel is usually so pie-in-the-sky that I don't even let myself think about it). But this time, my husband was going for work -- and since that meant his expenses were being covered, we decided I should go too. After all, how often do you get a half-free trip to Italy?

The town we were in -- called Rieti -- is the geographic centre of Italy. It's ancient, beautiful, and totally devoid of English-speaking tourists. That made for some adventures in communication, as I have forgotten everything I didn't learn in the first-year Italian class I took in University.

This trip was so interesting for so many reasons. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, but walking around Rieti is like walking around a time capsule. You'll turn a corner, and there's a 13-century arch starting you in the face. If there was anything that old in Canada, it would be behind glass - not a functional part of the city that you can touch and experience first-hand.

But being in a place where I didn't speak the language was actually surprisingly difficult. Everyone was extremely friendly about my very broken Italian, but it meant that I couldn't communicate beyond the basics (hello, how much, thank you, where is, etc). For me -- who's probably one of the chattiest people in the world -- that was unexpectedly tough, especially because I had never experienced that before. But it was also was one of the reasons the trip was so valuable. It made me think about how brave you'd have to be to move to a country where you don't speak the language.

It felt so good to stretch myself like that. And it doesn't hurt to do it in a place that looks like this: